Alex's swim journal

3K (3300 SCY)

Today I needed an easy day... I'm starting to feel the soreness and fatigue of the hard workouts I've been doing over the last couple of months. I'm such a slow-twitch freak, it's still taking me a while to get used to swimming FAST or HARD on a daily basis. Today, I wanted that feeling I used to love... just get in and keep moving, stay aerobic and feel the air in my lungs, the circulation in my veins, that nice warm yet relaxed feel at the end of an hour-long swim, mostly continuous. No long rests, no hard bursts, stay in control. Here's what I did:

The twist on this nearly continuous EZ swim for about an hour, was the fact that I still managed to work in some backstroke endurance stuff and, since my back has improved so dramatically in the last couple of months, I'm able to use that instead of doing an extra 1000 free.... which means for all intents and purposes it was an EZ day with close to the yardage I've been putting in on my harder days. Three or four months ago I never would have dreamed I could do 1000 in back at basically 1:00/50 pace for an EZ workout, my backstroke was so painfully slow for so long!

I know, I know... the hard stuff I've been doing over the last couple of months has made those improvements possible, so I'll be back to that soon enough. But it was nice to be able to just relax and enjoy the swim for once. I'm thinking about trying a descending IM ladder for tomorrow while I'm still fresh after the warm-up: 800 IM, 600 IM, 400 IM, 200 IM. No fly or breast today, so I'm hoping a break from that will help me come back with better energy tomorrow. Being a distance guy, I never feel that good about racing a distance that I can't double in practice, so doing even a slow 800 IM and 600 IM will make me feel a lot more confident about being able to swim a hard 400 IM at Whitefish Bay in a week and a half. Those 200s are looming as well... it's gonna be a lactic acid burn fest!